What's your favorite facet of film to talk about?

I consider film, and art in general, as a form of communication. A filmmaker tries to convey his thoughts, beliefs, views and emotions through his work and, therefore, share those aspects of himself with the audience. So the aspect I'm most interested in when I watch a film are the themes that it explores and the way the director deals with them. To me the way a filmmaker handles the themes contained within his work is just as important as the themes themselves. The ideas and concepts contained within a film and the way those unfold are definitely my favourite part of film viewing/discussion.

Go for broke messiness in a performance that meshes perfectly with the film but which the film can't keep up or equal but it's a fascinating example of NOT giving the audience what they think they want. Portman seems liberated in that role, and suggests she's got more surprises to come up her sleeve.

Well I hate to give the "cheating" non-answer but to me it kinda depends on the film. In general I dislike discussion of film that is based around breaking it down into its individuals units and it's something that bothers me a lot about much amateur film criticism in particular (and even some professional). Just in general internet discourse around film you'll see people with these equations like Film = "Acting" + "Writing" + "Cinematography" + "Rewatchability" + whatever the fuck etc. and while I do think it's important to single out the individual achievements that make a film work it is at the same time kinda dumb to evaluate film in such a reductionist way, especially as you're holding all films up to the same standard when not all of those elements are going to be equally important in every film you watch and there's nothing wrong with that but if you have that mindset you'll twist it into a problem. Like, you're probably not gonna get a clever screenplay and charismatic performances from a Claire Denis film because she's going to convey her ideas in a different way, but when you go in anticipating those things as an indication of the quality of the film then you're not going to evaluate it fairly. I hope this rant makes sense both on its own and in terms of how it relates to the thread topic ... what I'm getting at here is that I don't look at each film I watch as a summation of all of its individual parts and don't at all look for the same things in all films, so in that sense I don't think there can be one element of film that I favor over others. 

But in spite of that I think it is worth investigating what specific topics I do tend to favor when discussing a film. To cite an example of a film that I watched/discussed very recently would be The Lighthouse which is also a perfect case study for this as it's a film that the more I think about it the more perfect I think it is; i.e. it's one that I feel does everything right and does everything really well at that and all its elements are working perfectly in service of the film's goals, and yet it's not like I walked out of the movie talking about each of those individual things in equal measure. In fact when I think about it I think the elements I've talked about the most since seeing that movie are the performances and the dialogue -- they've stuck with me so well and are so easy to reference and so much fun to really break down -- now that's not to say that that's the case for every movie I watch (it isn't) or that these are things I expect to see in every film (they're not) or even that they were my favorite aspects of this particular film. Just kind of what my mind has gone to, perhaps because these things are "easier" to talk about than trying to dissect its thematic ambiguities, and also these are conversations formed based also on the perspectives of who I have talked about the film with whom I think tend to value these things. 

Going through more recent-ish examples of films that I've discussed a lot with friends afterwards, again there's not much consistency ... there's the John Wick trilogy where we talked most about the one-liners and the action choreography and then on the other hand There Will Be Blood where we talked more about different interpretations of the film and trying to spell out what the hell just happened in terms of its themes and character development. I guess because I prefer a film like TWBB to a film like John Wick you could assume that I prefer the discussion about TWBB to the discussion about John Wick so, yeah, discussing the thematic meat of a film always appeals to me a lot. But then again, I'm not bothered by the fact that I would never have a discussion about the "themes" of the John Wick trilogy nor do I consider it to be a "flaw" with those films that they don't offer that kind of conversation. 

So, yeah. My easy answer is that it depends on the film. My more "actually answering the question" answer is that I most like to talk about thematic interpretations of a film and the messages being communicated by the filmmakers -- but even that feels like a generic answer and, again, just because a film doesn't offer those things to me doesn't make it lesser in my eyes. 

I get what you're getting at here, and it really comes down to...if your favorite facet of film to discuss is *blank*, would you necessarily get a lot out of *blank*, which lacks *blank*? Maybe not, sure, but that's part of what I said right off the bat, and leads me to the other cool part of this question...asking yourself this'll give you a better look at why you like the films you do. But just to use your examples, I would actually argue that one could easily find the screenplays of Denis clever, or, hell, find Bresson's actors charismatic (I mean, Hal Hartley has directed some of my all time favorite performances) - just not in a conventional way. They're doing different things with scripts and performances than what is typical, but still using them as any other director would - to act how the director envisions. I'd actually say someone primarily interested in performance may be even more enamored with what guys like Bresson are doing with it in their films than someone who isn't. If they're interested in going beyond the surface level, of course, which, well, I did pose my question to people on a movie discussion forum, not to a group of randos who I found at Denny's in the middle of the night, so I'm going in with the assumption that they would be.   

Anyway, I'd say that all films - even stuff like John Wick - feature definite artistic communication from the filmmakers, and one liners and action choreography can even be, and maybe always are, a direct representation of this. That doesn't mean it isn't totally shallow or unimpressive in some (or many) cases. Of course I agree with the idea that a film lacking a story, or a scenery-chewing performance doesn't make it lesser than one that has all that, but that's not quite what I was asking. 

I'm sorry, I was just joking before. I'm an ass man.

(Writing is my favourite, because to me it ain't what it's about, but how it goes about being about it)

I'm a big picture guy a lot of the time, so general themes and ideas evoked are my big thing. When it comes to the specifics, though, I really like going into the blocking and the dynamic between the actors (who's being generous, how the stylistic choices mesh, how those choices convey the relationship of the characters, etc.).

Great call with blocking, that was one of the first things I really paid attention to when I got into movies and to this day I absolutely love when it’s done well, it hugely enhances a film for me when it is. 

Acting! 

i think a lot of western thought when it comes to art analysis (based strictly on what i have seen in others and experienced in school) comes down to analyzing the text with occasionally having almost Easter eggs of sorts being the only thing that connects it to the outside world. when we read Animal Farm in high school, analysis was entirely dedicated to the text and the actions of the characters in an abstract sense, but it rarely connected back to the real world and what orwell's trotskyist intentions were and whether or not these were actually sound arguments. come to think of it, when it comes to analyzing how the great american novels interacted with the outside world, i can't remember ever being questioned if this was an effective way to exert a message or analyze the situation at hand.

while we don't stay in high school forever, i think some people continue to use these somewhat standardized analysis techniques through their whole lives. but another reason is likely that most of the english language canon is kind of full of shitty people and it's difficult to have discussions about how the artist and their art interact when you're teaching that to schoolchildren. we need not throw out all the work by racist artists, but it's important to consider how that impacts a) the art itself when evaluating it, and b) the evaluation of its reception over time and what that says of a culture.

since these topics are rarely touched upon (in my educational experiences anyways) in the grade school level and probably not that hard in the undergrad level, it's possible people are reacting against a mode of analysis they think is bollocks because they never were taught to think that way, and we tend to get more stubborn as we mature.


to expand on why i like discussing it: art is made by people and it's a form of their expression. they didn't make decisions by chance or randomly; it's all either a conscious choice that we can analyze or a subconscious one where we can postulate. seeing how that interacts with their conditions and other things we know about them is really interesting to me, i like seeing how someone's work is shaped by their ideals, even if those are at odds.

Oh honeys, who slept with who...

It's an interesting question, and one that I never really thought about it, to be honest. As someone who write reviews, the one aspect of film that I often find myself going back to is the production design. Not just look of a film, but how effective it is, how much it stood out, and how memorable it is. Some of my favorite movies offer unique visual stylings, and those are the films that I tend to appreciate most of all.